Allotment Growing

Vegetable, Fruit & Herb Gardening

Allotment Planning Software from GrowVeg.com

Online Planning Software for your Allotment

Taking on an allotment requires plenty of organisational skills as well as gardening ones. There are many areas that need careful planning in order to produce a successful and productive plot:

• Seeds need ordering in the correct quantities
• A plan needs to be drawn up of what will be planted where
• Vegetables need to be rotated each year, making sure that plants from the same crop family are not grown in the same location in order to keep down pests and make sure that the soil does not become depleted of particular nutrients
• Several vegetables are best started off inside or in a greenhouse to gain the maximum length of growing season and it is important to estimate how many plants will be required for the given space
• Many vegetables require sowing, planting out and harvesting at particular times and it is useful to have a calendar to keep track of what needs doing each week

Traditionally, allotment holders have set up their own systems to manage these tasks – usually involving a notebook where the area can be planned out, often with a week-by-week list of things to be done and a record of what worked well. For some, this organisation happens naturally and they develop a ‘feel’ for when things need to be done based on years of experience. But others find they need to plan more thoroughly to get the best from their plot.

Online Allotment or Vegetable Planning Software

GrowVeg.com is a website that aims to simplify this process by providing an online Garden Planning Tool. Contained within the software is all the gardening knowledge that usually has to be looked up in books, together with a complete system for spacing, scheduling and crop rotation.

To start with, a gardener simply creates an account on the GrowVeg.com website to register for the free 30-day trial. They then start up the Garden Planning Tool to draw out a plan of their plot:

Once the layout of the allotment has been drawn, adding fruit and vegetables is a simple matter of choosing them from the selection bar at the top and clicking to place them on the plan, either individually or by holding down the mouse button to ‘drag out’ a row. The size of the surrounding circle shows how much space each plant requires and the colour shows which crop family it belongs to. For example, all brassicas are surrounded by a green area, allowing them to be kept together and spaced correctly (see picture above)

Quick Information on Vegetable Requirements

One hundred common vegetables and fruit are available within the planning tool. Beside each vegetable on the selection bar is an information button (also coloured to show the crop family) which brings up information about the preferred soil type, whether they are frost tolerant, how to plant, grow, feed and harvest them, together with any companion plants.

Any number of plans can be created, so different areas of an allotment, or front and back gardens can be planned separately. For each plan a complete planting list is compiled automatically, showing how many plants to raise, how to space them (the system will also work with feet and inches) and when to sow, plant and harvest.

For more information, visit GrowVeg.com